The Celebrity Wine + Song Pairing Guide

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Winemaking has long been a hobby of the wealthy and famous, like sailboat racing or house-flipping. But unlike those celebrities who engage in expensive and less visible activities (anyone ever actually seen Georgina Bloomberg compete in a dressage competition?), vintners are putting their wares out there to be critiqued, consumed, and, ideally, enjoyed by the public. With sacks of money and the best winemakers in the world at their disposal, you have to assume that people like Nancy Pelosi and Francis Ford Coppola aren't just slapping their names on labels the way Paris Hilton puts out perfume or Swarovski crystal-encrusted Chihuahua collars. So how's the product? Drew Barrymore, at least, likes Barrymore Pinot Grigio, telling us that it reminds her of Etta James's "Something's Got a Hold on Me." Using Barrymore's musical rubric, we assessed the wines of her fellow luminaries/winos via song.

The Wine: Omnipresent straight-laced-but-vaguely-sinister actor Kyle MacLachlan turned to winemaking in his native Pacific Northwest as a way to gain a little control: "As an actor, you're somewhat at the mercy of opportunity — you're a gun for hire. As a winemaker, you are in control of most of the elements that you need for winemaking, except the weather and God." While MacLachlan plays commander only to Captain God on this sea journey called winemaking, I like to imagine fellow cabernet fan David Lynch drinking the rich and spicy cabernet while directing a scene in which a be-suited MacLachlan stomps grapes in the Walla Walla mist.

The Wine: Sting and Trudie Styler own the Italian estate where Il Palagio wine is made, and like everything else about them, Sister Moon has a palpable quality of luxury, like it should come with a little chinchilla fur wine koozie (JK, obviously vegan spiritualists Sting and Trudie would never use animal products with their biodynamically grown crops). I picture the pair sipping the fruity and smooth 2008 Sister Moon as they stroll linen-clad through their estate grounds post-lovemaking session.

The Wine: While the press release prefers to describe Crush as "quaffable," the first tasting note I got while drinking Dave Matthews's 2010 cabernet sauvignon was "jammy." After self-flagellating with my boyfriend's size-fifteen athletic socks to atone for making a musical pun, I drank until I had a vision of Dave Matthews wearing rolled-up khakis and dangling his legs off a dock while drinking the Cabernet Sauvignon out of a Mason jar.

The Wine: When I heard Brad and Angelina were releasing a wine, I assumed it, like everything else that their slender loins beget, would be superior to the grape-based beverages of regular people. That expectation led to a feeling of "Blah blah, it's elegant and refreshing, just like Brangelina" while I drank it, which segued into the primary emotion you will have while consuming the wine: confusion. Why would the world's most powerful power couple release a rosé? Can you really imagine Angelina Jolie ordering a glass in a restaurant? The only way I can envision Brad Pitt even drinking wine (which is red in this fantasy) is out of a bottle and following a sizable joint. Let's assume that the Jolie-Pitts produced this reasonably priced wine as an act of charity for people with worse taste than them.

The Wine: Unlike the aforementioned dilettantes, Andrea Bocelli's family has been making wine since the 18th century. As a child, little Andrea, who, yes, was blind at the time, actually worked in the vineyard. I see Andrea singing Verdi into the Tuscan night, then sipping In Canto and shaking his head, knowing the wine needs to age in its French oak cask a few months longer before it can match the richness and complexity of his voice.